when I say," he wrote to a friend

"How, when they went down Sparta

way,

To sandy Sparta, long ere dawn
Horses were harnessed, rations drawn,
Equipment polished sparkling bright,
And breakfasts swallowed (as the white
Of Eastern heavens turned to gold)-
The dogs barked, swift farewells were
told."

"And now the fight begins again," he said. "The old war-joy, the old war-pain.'

It

Thus life and letters were merged in his mind. When he read poetry, he remembered activity and the open air. And in his letters you may mark the growth and progress of his taste, his talent, and his character. Like all boys in whom breathes the spirit of adventure, he was at heart a rebel. That is to say, he would take nothing on trust. irked him to listen to the dogmatic voice of authority. He was resolute to find things out for himself, to make a fair conquest of the prose, the poetry, and the conduct which he thought belonged to him. He resented the interference, the guidance of others. wanted to find his own way about the past and the present without sign-posts. For the moment, in his eyes, Tennyson and Swinburne were "rotters, and though time and change might have taught him otherwise, he would not bow to the opinion of any master. When he was urged to read Pater, a writer of the hothouse, who never could have meant much to him, he justly resented the infliction. "I am quite be

He

foozled," he wrote, when he was seventeen, "I have just finished my weekly hour's course of Walter Pater. That oreature has been foisted on me by Sidney, and I have to read an essay of his every week. This is only the second week, so I really ought not to give an opinion, but I think he is the dullest and most stilted author I have ever read." His anger at having to "beat out an hour every Sunday" with Pater's 'Appreciations' is easily intelligible. There is no sound in Pater's prose of the wind blowing across the open downs.

The desire of self-knowledge and free discovery is the constant burden of his prose, and in 'What you Will' he sang in verse to the same tune:

"I do not know if it seems brave
The youthful spirit to enslave,
I don't know if it's better so
And trudge about, lest it should grow.
In the long end. I only know
That, when I have a son of mine,
He shan't be made to droop and pine,
Bound down and forced by rule and
To serve a God who is no God."

rod

at last he contemplates his favourite's works without emotion. "In the holidays," he writes in February 1914, "I shunted Masefield into a siding, and discovered Hardy." Presently he found new gods to worship, the Goethe of 'Faust' and the Ibsen of 'Peer Gynt,' but to Hardy and Jefferies he never wavered in loyalty. And, no matter who was the god of the moment, he found excellent reasons for the faith that was in him.

When he left Marlborough and went to Germany, he took thither with him the curiosity of mind and honesty of judgment which had hitherto interpreted to him the books which he had read, the men and boys whom he had met. A sympathetic study of the Germans left him puzzled. To the best of them his sense of humour gave a clue. The worst of them he dismissed as hypoorites. But he found friends in Germany, and an amiable memory of Schwerin forbade him, when in the stress of battle, to take a harsh view of our enemies. When war was declared he was still in Germany, contrived after a day's imprisonment to return to England, and speedily got a commission. He talked little of the war, and took the necessity of sacrifice for granted, for his was the true temperament of a soldier. His comment upon Rupert Brooke explains clearly enough his own simple, straightforward point of view. "He is far too obsessed with his own sacrifice," he wrote of Rupert Brooke, "regarding the

going to war of himself (and others) as a highly intense, remarkable, and sacrificial exploit, whereas it is merely the conduct demanded of him (and others) by the turn of circumstances, where non-compliance with this demand would have made life intolerable. It was not that 'they' gave up anything of that list he gives in one sonnet, but that the essence of these things had been endangered by circumstances over which he had no control, and he must fight to recapture them. He has clothed his attitude in fine words, but he has taken the sentimental attitude." These are the words of a soldier. The end came to Charles Sorley on October 13, 1915. He was shot by a sniper near Hulluoh, at the age of twentyfour.

What Charles Sorley would have done had he lived, it is idle to speculate. It is certain that he would have been happy. Everything that he approached books, the Wiltshire Downs, the strange people of a small German town

-was for him the raw material of happiness. Though he had known the best of life, the future would not have failed him. And as we were reading Charles Sorley's letters, we came upon another book of a schoolboy-'Some Winchester Letters,' by Lionel Johnson. There we found the passage that follows, written when its author was seventeen: "I see realities," wrote Johnson, "and follow shadows. I, as Beddoes says, 'with half

I feel myself born too late. I ought to have been an Alchemist, and searched, alone, for the Elixir of Life, and died on the brink of finding it." Could there be discovered a more violent contrast? On the one hand is Lionel Johnson, gazing with a morbid self-consciousness within himself, and finding the dry bones of a posed insincerity. On the other is Charles Sorley, looking upon life and books with an eye of truthful curiosity, testing all

the gayer, wiser kind; and it is of good augury for our future that, in point of time, the two men could not have changed places. They are separated not only by temperament, but by a generation of men; and whatever sorrows encumber our path, we may at least felicitate ourselves that we live in a saner, sounder age than the far-off 'eighties, when even schoolboys were flayed by "the scourges of doubt and repentance.

trepidation, as the only chart of the group was one hundred years old; while, on every side of all three islands, we could see tall white spouts of bursting spray, marking the positions of the rocky reefs that stretched their ugly arms inhospitably round the shores.

We kept at prism-binocular distance; but were able to see quite definitely, that the islands were entirely Hunless. And, lying off, we went to target practice at one of the more prominent rock-pinnacles.

It is strange to recall this early impression of the group, remembering what a solace to us its islands became, later on! There chanced to be in our squadron a single officer of that hardy though rare breed, the Hydrographic Surveyor. By "lashed-up" means-(that is to say, "improvised ")-and with 8 makeshift staff of assistants, a tolerable chart was produced by him, which included the whole group, with reefs, soundings, and fathomcontour lines, complete. Following this advance of scientific knowledge, the rocky horrors turned into convenient marks, by which to fix an approaching ship's position; the reefs and shoals came to eat out of our hand, so to speak, and were transformed from dangers into breakwaters against the northeasterly swell rolling in.

Accordingly, whenever oircumstances permitted, we came to anchor at one or other of the islands, for a few hours of rest and recreation. If nothing else was excellent about the group, the bathing was; and

so was the fishing, and oh! the extraordinary joy it was to feel terra-firma-even desert soil-under one's feet!

Once, when we were anchored close off Great Salvage Island, a large neutral steamer passed; and seeing us, as it appeared to them, hopelessly wrecked, broadside on the rocks, surrounded by the terrifying spouts of white water, she timidly approached, and politely inquired, "Can I render any assistance?" Her captain must have been thoroughly thankful, if amazed, to get our reply, "Much obliged for your kind offer, but quite happy here at anchor. Pleasant voyage to you.'

The Salvages have their share of romance. Those who have read The Cruise of the Alert' will recall the account of her visit to one of the islands, and of the deathbed statement of the old pirate who had sailed with Captain Kidd in the Spanish Main, and his sworn declaration that large quantities of his chief's treasure had there been deposited. So circumstantial was the account, and the directions for finding it, that the British Government, years ago, actually sent a man-of-war to investigate and to dig; but nothing was ever discovered.

We were too busy enjoying ourselves, every time we went there, to fuss about a few paltry jewelled chalices, or gold pieces-of-eight; and, 80 far as we are concerned, they still lie hid - ghost-guarded, and intact.

Wearied as we were with